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May 22, 2007

When Do Schools Cross the Line in Sex Ed?

A series of recent incidents in which school children have been provided with information about sex and drugs from a very open-minded perspective has got me thinking about just how much schools should defer to parents when it comes to such delicate topics. When kids are not provided with information, whether due to inattention by their parents or religious and moral belief systems, they can end up in trouble because they failed to recognize danger and/or did not know how to avoid it. On the other hand, if you give kids too much information, they might think they have carte blanch permission to do anything or, for those who always want to push the boundaries, go further in their experimentation than they otherwise might have gone. Some kids are already in the process of rejecting their parents' beliefs or perhaps are afraid to tell their parents about their sexuality and want information their parents will not give to them. The question is, at what point does the public school system cross the line in providing information on sex and drugs to children without their parents' knowledge or permission?

One of the recent incidents involves an assembly at Boulder High School in Colorado where a psychology professor told students as young as 14 to go ahead and have sex and use drugs "appropriately" because they were "going to do it anyway." A partial transcript puts the comments into better perspective, but is still disturbing to me as a parent – even though I have had somewhat similar (but less explicit) conversations with my own children. Except for that drug part. I mean, is it really a healthy thing to tell high school students that there is even such a concept as using drugs "appropriately," particularly when by saying so you are encouraging illegal behavior? I think the assembly, if allowed at all, should have been optional and parents should have been invited so they could have had the opportunity to engage in follow-up discussions with their children.

The reason I question whether the assembly should even have been allowed is explained best by this:

Priscilla White [an upset parent] told [school] board members it's inappropriate for such a message to be delivered by a public school. She was reading excerpts of the presentation to the board when board President Helayne Jones told her to stop, because the language was inappropriate.

If adults in a school board meeting are offended by a transcript of the presentation, then clearly the presentation should not have been made to the students. I understand the generational differences in attitude toward these topics and the desire to overcome the hang-ups that caused problems for today's adults. So to say this was "Strike 7,867,960,071 Against Public Education" is a bit over the top. But I also think high school is too early to expose kids to viewpoints that are completely contrary to their parents' beliefs without their parents' knowledge or permission. That should wait until college when they are adults.

I'm a little less, but not much less, offended by a recent seminar held at North Newton High School in Newton, Mass. that explained to students how to know if they are gay, where to meet other gay kids, and other related issues. The problem was not that it taught "the homosexual agenda," but rather that parents were banned from attending the seminar. As a parent, I find that absolutely galling. At the same time, I understand some parents are so radically intolerant of homosexuality that they would deny their children the sort of information that could help them live emotionally and physically healthy lives.

A third recent incident occurred at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, where 14-year-old students were required to attend a seminar on homosexuality that basically, if we're being honest, was an effort to de-program their homophobia. Again, I don't personally have a problem with this. My kids have developed their own views on the matter and are pretty locked into them, and we have discussed it a number of times. The catch here was that the students had to sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to tell anyone what was said in the seminar – including their parents. That makes me wonder how explicit the information was – and if it was explicit, why the school thought that information was necessary to give to straight kids.

I am not a big fan, to put it mildly, of locking parents out of the information being given to kids who are still minors. Healthy family relationships are built on trust and honesty, and to ask kids to hide something from their parents that they normally might want to discuss with them is flat out wrong.

As for the Christian parents who are having so much trouble with the modern approach to this entire topic, I really cannot blame them for increasingly pulling their kids out of the public school system and putting them into private, religious schools. But for the rest of us, I believe we need to know what our children are being told. It isn't so much a matter of "rights," as in our kids being our "property." Rather, it's a matter of our responsibility to our kids to do our best for them. Parents know their kids better than anyone else, know what they're ready to learn, and have a set of values they want to pass on to their children. All of that should be respected.

Posted by Becky at May 22, 2007 10:00 AM